Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Job appears in the Bible as a true story and it is regarded as such in other Scripture: As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the…
Thanksgiving is warfare. Gratitude is a weapon. Wield it well. Give thanks for the preparation. The hustle and bustle, the messy kitchen, the endless cleaning, the extra chairs, and stained tablecloths sing the song of hospitality. God desires that we prepare a place for friends and strangers, feasting and laughing,…
We often hear that, along with Leviticus, Ecclesiastes is the “most peculiar book,” lurking in the Bible’s back alley. 1 But it is high time that we retire this old dirge. God has concealed much gold here, therefore much glory is ours if we are careful to read Solomon’s wisdom…
1 Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you observe the calving of the does? 2 Can you number the months that they fulfill, and do you know the time when they give birth? Job 39 We have and we do, Lord God. Spring is calving season.…
For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a holy day, a Sabbath of complete rest to Yahweh. - Exodus 35:2 The instructions for building the tabernacle end with a Sabbath command and the narrative about building begins with a Sabbath command, before…
High in the list of now forgotten sins is simony. It was not always so: the medieval schoolmen believed simony to be the worst of ecclesiastical crimes and waged a centuries long campaign to purge the Church of this financial and spiritual corruption. As the schoolmen robustly defined it, “simony…
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According to Fergus Kerr, it was Bonaventure, not Thomas, who first employed the axiom “grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it,” in his commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences.
Markus wants to distinguish between the fact that people who act in the public realm always act with ultimate ends in view, and that their actions are either moral or immoral from the notion that there is a neutral public space. The public sphere, he claims, shouldn’t be thought of…
RA Markus (Christianity and the Secular) argues that as the church celebrated the triumph of Christianity in the fourth century, they also wanted to maintain their continuity with the church that gave them birth - the persecuted church of the martyrs: “The great need felt by Christians of the post-Constantinian…
Charles Taylor has suggested that secularism was an “exit strategy” from religious conflict. There were two exit strategies. In the summary by RA Markus, “The first, ‘the common ground strategy,’ assumes a certain range of beliefs shared by all Christians (or all theists) and minimises or eliminates confessional differences that…
John Locke drew up the basic contours of the modern conception of religion as internal and private in his “Letter Concerning Toleration.” He made a sharp distinction between religious and civil realms: “The end of a religious society, as has already been said, is the public worship of God, and,…
Comments primarily on Aquinas on Gratitude/Ingratitude (primarily ST, II-II, qs 106-7). Aquinas describes gratitude as a virtue “annexed” to justice, and so to understand his discussion of gratitude, we must get some handle on what he means by justice. In ST II-II, q. 58, he describes justice as a virtue.…
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